VI.

[Preached October 28, 1849.]

THE SHADOW AND THE SUBSTANCE OF THE SABBATH.

COL. ii. 16, 17

"Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in ́drink, or in respect of an holiday, or of the new-moon, or of the sabbathdays which are a shadow of things to come: but the body is of Christ"

No sophistry or criticism can explain away the ob vious meaning of these words. The apostle speaks of certain institutions as Jewish shadowy, typical; and among these we are surprised to find the Sabbath days. It has been contended that there is here no allusion to the seventh day of rest, but only to certain Jewish holidays, not of Divine institution. But, in the first place, the "holidays" have been already named in the same verse; in the next, we are con vinced that no plain man, reading this verse for the first time, without a doctrine to support, would have put such an interpretation upon the word; and we may be sure that St. Paul would never have risked so certain a misconstruction of his words by the use of an ambiguous phrase. This, then, is the first thing we lay down, a very simple postulate, one would think,when the apostle says the Sabbath-days, he means the Sabbath-days.

Péculiar difficulties attend the discussion of the subject of the Sabbath. If we take the strict and ultra ground of Sabbath observance, basing it on the rigorous requirements of the fourth commandment, we take ground which is not true; and all untruth, whether it be an over-statement or a half-truth, recoils upon itself. If we impose on men a burden which cannot be borne, and demand a strictness which, possible in theory, is impossible in practice, men recoil; we have asked too much, and they give us nothing; the result is an open, wanton, and sarcastic desecra tion of the Day of Rest.

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If, on the other hand, we state the truth, that the Sabbath is obsolete a shadow which has passedwithout modification or explanations, evidently there iş a danger no less perilous. It is true to spiritual, false to unspiritual men; and a wide door is opened for abuse. And to recklessly loosen the hold of a nation on the sanctity of the Lord's Day would be most mischievous; to do so wilfully would be an act almost diabolical. For, if we must choose between Puritan over-precision, on the one hand, and, on the other, that laxity which, in many parts of the Continent, has marked the day from other days only by more riotous worldliness, and a more entire aban donment of the whole community to amusement, no Christian would hesitate,no English Christian, at least, to whom that day is hallowed by all that is endearing in early associations, and who feels how much it is the very bulwark of his country's moral purity.

Here, however, as in other cases, it is the half-truth which is dangerous-the other half is the corrective:

the whole truth alone is safe. If we say the Sabbath is shadow, this is only half the truth. The apostle adds, "the body is of Christ."

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There is, then, in the Sabbath, that which is shadowy, and that which is substantial; that which is transient, and that which is permanent; that which is temporal and typical, and that which is eternal. The shadow, and the body.

Hence, a very natural and simple division of our subject suggests itself:

I. The transient shadow of the Sabbath, which has passed away.

II. The permanent substance, which cannot pass.

I. The transient shadow, which has passed away. The history of the Sabbath-day is this: It was given by Moses to the Israelites, partly as a sign between God and them, marking them off from all other nations by its observance; partly as commemo. rative of their deliverance from Egypt. And the rea son why the seventh day was fixed on, rather than the sixth or eighth, was, that on that day God rested from his labor. The soul of man was to form itself on the model of the Spirit of God. It is not said that God at the creation gave the Sabbath to man, but that God rested at the close of the six days of creation: where upon he had blessed and sanctified the seventh day to the Israelites. This is stated in the fourth command. ment, and also in Gen. i., which was written by the Israelites; and the history of creation naturally and appropriately introduces the reason and the sanction of their day of rest.

Nor is there in the Old Testament a single trace

of the observance of the Sabbath before the time of Moses. After the Deluge, it is not mentioned in the covenant made with Noah. The first account of it occurs after the Israelites had left Egypt; and the fourth commandment consolidates it into a law, and explains the principle and sanctions of the institution.

The observance of one day in seven, therefore, is purely Jewish. The Jewish obligation to observe it rested on the enactment given by Moses.

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The spirit of its observance, too, is Jewish, and not Christian. There is a difference between the spirit of Judaism and that of Christianity. The spirit of Judaism is separation that of Christianity is permeation. To separate the evil from the good was the aim and work of Judaism: to sever one nation from all other nations; certain meats from other meat; certain days from other days. Sanctify, means to set apart. The very essence of the idea of Hebrew holiness lay in sanctification in the sense of separation.

On the contrary, Christianity is permeation: it permeates all evil with good; it aims at overcoming evil by good; it desires to transfuse the spirit of the day of rest into all other days, and to spread the holiness of one nation over all the world. To saturate life with God, and the world with heaven,-that is the genius of Christianity.

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Accordingly, the observance of the Sabbath was entirely in the Jewish spirit. No fire was permitted to be made, on pain of death: Exod. xxxv. 3. No food was to be prepared: xvi. 5, 23. No buying nor selling: Nehem. x. 31. So rigorously was all this carried out, that a man gathering sticks was arraigned

before the congregation, and sentenced to death by Moses.

This is Jewish, typical, shadowy:- it is all to pass away. Much already has passed: even those who believe our Lord's day to be the descendant of the Sabbath admit this. The day is changed. The first day of the week has taken the place of the seventh. The computation of hours is altered. The Jews reckoned from sunset to sunset: modern Christians reckon, from midnight to midnight. The spirit of its observance, too, is altered. No one contends now for Jewish strictness in its details.

Now, observe, all this implies the abrogation of a great deal more-nay, of the whole Jewish Sabbath itself. We have altered the day, the computation of the hours,. the mode of observance. What remains to keep? Absolutely nothing of the literal portion, except one day in seven; and that is abrogated, if the rest be abrogated. For, by what right do we say that the order of the day, whether it be the first or the seventh, is a matter of indifference, because only formal, but that the proportion of days, one in seven, instead of one in eight or nine, is moral, and unalterable ?On what intelligible principle do we produce the fourth commandment as binding upon Christians, and abrogate so important a clause of it as, "In it thou shalt do no manner of work"? On what selfevident ground is it shown that the Jew might not light a fire, but the Christian may; yet that if the postal arrangements of a country permit the delivery of a letter, it is an infraction of the Sabbath?

Unquestionably on no scriptural authority. Let those who demand a strict observance of the letter